Black activists gathered on the steps of the State Capitol on Wednesday to oppose two new bills that would ban transgender Texans from restrooms before the legislature.
Antonio Ingram II, Senior Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, invoked the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education that ended the practice of racial segregation in schools when he took the stage. The legacy of that case inspired him to speak at the event.
“As a Black American whose family originally hails from Texas, I personally know how state-sanctioned discrimination has harmed communities in Texas,” he said. “Segregation never increased safety. Segregation only served to isolate, erase, and endanger. Whether it was Jim Crow signs baring my ancestors here in Texas from water fountains and restrooms, or modern legislation policing where trans people can access basic resources, such as using the restroom, the intention is the same: to control and discriminate through exclusion.”
House Bill 32 is a robust bill of anti-trans legislation that would mandate all public restrooms be “designated for and used only by individuals of the same biological sex,” which the bill defines entirely by external genitals or chromosomal makeup. It also prohibits government offices from establishing gender neutral bathrooms. The bill was filed by fellow Houston-area State Rep. Valoree Swanson (R-Spring). Its counterpart is Senate Bill 7. Both are under consideration in the current special legislative session.
These bills are the latest attempt to establish legal segregation against transgender people in the state. Banning them from bathrooms has been a common tactic, though it previously failed to pass at the state level in 2017. Two years prior in Houston, religious conservatives rallied to oppose the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), which offered increased civil protections under gender identity, mostly by claiming it would lead to assaults against cisgender women and girls if trans women were allowed to use public restrooms.
In reality, it is almost impossible to find a verifiable account of a trans woman assaulting a cis one in a public restroom. Far more common are cis people accosting other cis people they suspect of being transgender.
However, opposing trans rights has become a focal point of conservative politics in recent years, especially in Texas. The state legislature already banned gender-affirming care and passed a slew of bill erasing trans identity. Many advocates see the parallels between Jim Crow segregation and the attacks on trans people. Such attacks are historically part of rising fascist power.
Joining Ingram on stage were several Black activists, including Houston’s Verniss McFarland III of the Mahogany Project and Chas Moore of the Austin Justice Coalition. McFarland highlighted the similarities to modern anti-trans legislation and the discrimination their grandfather endured in Birmingham, Alabama.
“Those were the people who endured the so-called separate-but-equal policy, which we know meant separate but nowhere equal,” they said. “Pushing forward with the hope that their children, their grands, and their great-grands would not be subject to this cycle. Not long ago, bathrooms were marked white and colored. Today, lawmakers are considering legislation that would prohibit transgender persons form using cisgendered bathrooms. Tell me how this is any different?”
They added, “This is not about safety or privacy. It’s about telling transgender people where they are in the hierarchy.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
